@FluttershyIsNOT aDoormat
Cheating is the gift mare gives herself :P

“The hell does Trixie even commit tax fraud for?”

@Badumsquish  
I wouldn’t be surprised if that was the reason.

@Red-Supernova  
Honestly though, I bet they didn’t think much past the whole parallel universe thing aside from having an excuse to introduce new weird worlds or characters whenever they want XD

@Badumsquish  
So that’s what Rick and Morty are implying with all of this? They really did take fan disputes to the next level.

@Red-Supernova  
In any other scenario I’d agree that an unofficial cameo couldn’t be considered canon, but just because Rick and Morty has infinite universes with infinite possibilities it’s technically canon with everything :P

@Badumsquish  
I’m not surprised that Justin has contradicted his own claim (I haven’t watched Season 4 of Rick and Morty yet to see what else has changed.) but since he isn’t in contact with FiM’s staff as he is with Gravity Falls’s, then it was just an unofficial cameo.

She says she pays taxes, but…
 

@Red-Supernova  
Two possibilities. One is that any human who comes to Equestria transforms into a pony, like what happened with Sci-Twi. Two is that Justin’s waffled on that decision as there’s a Cat World in Rick and Morty :D

@Badumsquish  
Good point. But what about Justin Rolland’s claim that none of those universes have a Rick and a Morty that started as animals? He probably made that rule to shut down any requests of possible furry overtones for his show, which is why you don’t see any animal versions of Rick and Morty in the Council of Ricks. But who knows, those animal versions may be very distant from the other Ricks and Mortys.
 
Not surprised. Things can only get so confusing.

@Badumsquish
 
they “don’t” read fan work. :p

@redweasel  
US Copyright is strict in a lot of ways. It’s actually a big reason why they don’t read fan work either. You can’t copyright an idea in and of itself, but you can copyright the expression of that idea in writing and imagery. The fear is that if they canonize such a thing you established, now you actually own an aspect of their work and can actually control if, when, and how they use that thing :P

@Badumsquish
 
it’s smart in the sense that ideas literally cannot be owned, bought, or sold, so it’s gonna be an extremely deluded intelligence.
 
but yes given current us and mostly international law, crossovers are more legally risky than ripoffs.

@redweasel  
They probably just wanted to do their own thing. Besides, Ken Penders was straight up able to sue Sega for ownership of THEIR characters because they canonized backstories he wrote, allowing him to make copyright claims. Seriously. It caused massive waves that still negatively affect Sonic as a franchise to this day and is basically the reason they had to do a soft-reboot. It’s actually pretty smart of the show writers to keep the comic writers in a “comic stuff always follows show canon, but show stuff never follows comic canon” relationship since it keeps it pretty firmly established who owns the ip :P

@Badumsquish
 

 
that really is a shame though. the show creators were working up all season about what was in that box. and that weird colored rainbow from g1 called “the rainbow of light” was just coincidentally the same colors as the m6. then it was like “poof done.” it’d be like if all of s1 had been about discovering the eoh, and then the writers glossed over snootie’s defeat because they thought the elements were too toyetic.
 
I mean it was harsh enough that they did that in only two episodes.

@redweasel  
It depends, honestly. It’s like a venn diagram, with three forces pulling in opposing directions but all with the chance to overlap. Like, I’d put Cadance in the Quality/Financially Smart overlap, like she WAS mandated in a totally brainless move to have a new pink horse to sell and to capitalize off of that wedding, but the writers also made her probably the most interesting of the three princesses. Like, notably she’s the only one of the three princesses to actually take charge in an event, lead her followers in an event, and succeed in the event XD
 
On the other hand, Rainbow Power was as far away from Quality and Artistic Vision as you could get. The writers were basically told “add these toys” and they were just like “alright, lets just do it as quickly as possible, make them just poof and fix everything in like a second, so we can put as much focus as possible on the actual Tirek fight we wanted to show” XD  

 
@Red-Supernova  
That one cameo is much stronger evidence than any other one cameo because Rick and Morty deals with infinite universes. They have infinite universes with infinite possibilities, so the odds of there being a pony universe are guaranteed and it is indeed possible that specific universe just happens to be Equestria. Gravity Falls would then be in the same canon as well because Gravity Falls and Rick and Morty take place in the same canon :P
 
Some of them probably did. Andy Price was the one who made the outright “Hasbro says they’re canon” claim, but like none of the show writers seemed to like the idea one bit and went out of their way to be as ambiguous as possible :P

@Badumsquish  
Same here about mandates. As long as the quality stays consistent.  
Its hard to tell for these kinds of shows whether their decisions will be good in the end or not. Its like a giant gamble.
 
Whoa now, the SAME multiverse as Rick and Morty all because of that one cameo? That is a very big stretch since the creators of Rick and Morty aren’t in contact with MLP:FiM’s staff but are with Gravity Falls, at least that’s what I’ve heard.
 

 
Aren’t the comic writers guilty of that as well?
 
@redweasel  
But I like Princess Cadance.

@Badumsquish
 
quality shows are not very “financially smart.”
 
they introduced princess cadance for instance, which allowed them to capitalize on the royal wedding in britain to get free promotion, which made them money, but it lowered the quality of the show.

@Red-Supernova  
I’ve never truly cared whether something was mandated or not anyways. To me, the quality of the show is what counts. If the show’s bad it’s bad, and if it’s good it’s good, and it doesn’t matter who was “responsible” for it. Though I do think studios and higher-ups should really take note of when decisions they’ve forced on the show cause waves. Not because I feel like they owe us or anything, but because not forcing bad decisions that make the quality of the show suffer is the financially smart move :P
 
I feel that was one of two easy ways to do it, since multiverses is a common thing in comics and especially because both the show and the comic already deal with parallel universes like the mirror universe, Equestria girls, and even a cameo that implies (albeit loosely) that the show takes place in the same multiverse as Rick and Morty AND by extension Gravity Falls. It’s a literal have-your-cake-and-eat-it-to scenario: the comic is totally canon and they also have free reign to do whatever they want or establish whatever they want. The other way would have been to take the show writers path where they just constantly avoided answering XD

@Badumsquish  
I see what you mean. This makes me more glad that the Student Six were in those episodes to give them some more spice.
 
I can tell. So unless we get more insider info from the showrunners, a lot of decisions are gonna remain shrouded in mystery. But maybe that’s on purpose because we know people really want to screech at each and every decision the show has made and who was the source of each one.
 
So you would have made it clear off the bat rather than lure fans in thinking this was expanded universe stuff?

@Red-Supernova  
I’m not saying they hurt them, just that there’s nothing in the episode that relied on those specific characters or their personalities to work. Like Non-Compete Clause could have had a group of generic foals as students, like the same group that was stalking Twilight in Twilight Time, and nothing would have needed to have been changed. Molt Down could have had Twilight just consult a book about Spike’s condition, with a line like “I got this book about dragon anatomy after you had those weird greed-based growth spurts.” Things like that :P
 
That’s the thing, too. Like, it’s actually really hard to tell what Hasbro made them add, and what they chose to add, because they’re pretty organic about all of it. We know Hasbro made them do the school because Jim Miller said so, and I’m like 99% sure that Twilight’s new castle and their Rainbow Power forms were put on them by Hasbro because I’m pretty sure the show was making fun of them when those two specific things are brought up to annoy Twilight’s clone and are otherwise never mentioned XD
 
I would have done the comics as specifically taking place in an alternate universe, and then had an issue making fun of it where the show’s canon characters (drawn show style) get brought into the comics universe and meet their comic counterparts (who are drawn comic style) and then have them constantly rip on each other. Like, have Show Spike rip on the idea of a dragon ghetto in the middle of a pony town doesn’t make a lick of sense and Comic Spike gets all indignant about it XD

@Red-Supernova
 
that’s actually why I started paying attention to the comics.

@Badumsquish  
I can see your point on those episodes even though I think those added characters didn’t hurt those episodes that much. And Trixie originally being Twilight’s student sounds like a possible idea they once had. Also, it wasn’t Hasbro who asked to make these characters. They were the decisions of the writers themselves.
 
I think that’s why a lot of people eventually stopped paying much attention to the comics. They expected more canon but were given AU stuff instead.

@Red-Supernova  
I don’t actually think so. I think they reworked a lot of episodes or stories they already intended to do, and simply changed them from starring main characters to “focus” on those new characters. We would have still gotten them, just without those new characters. Like, Fame and Misfortune would have just had Spike in it (in fact, probably a lot of Starlight’s subordinate-to-Twilight roles were recycled from what were originally Spike’s), episodes like Non Compete Clause and Molt Down would have worked without the Student Six all the same (they’re actually largely irrelevant to the plots), A Matter of Principals could have taken place in any environment with any character (Like Discord fucking with Pinkie Pie while she planned a party, or fucking with Rainbow Dash while she tried to do Wonderbolts stuff, or just fucking with Twilight trying to run the school). In fact, my prevailing theory is that they originally intended to have either Trixie be Twilight’s student (as that would have felt like a fairly natural continuation from Magic Duel) or possibly (but less likely) that they intended to have Sunset Shimmer in that role (and were possibly told no so she could stay in Equestria Girls). I don’t claim to know anything, but most of those episodes could have been done with just the Mane Six with barely any rewriting and if I was a writer on the show I certainly wouldn’t have started from scratch just to accommodate Hasbro selling new toys XD
 
It’s actually a thing that happens with a lot of comic adaptations. You have two writing teams that are completely isolated from one another, have vastly different styles, and often even try to undermine each other out of spite. It’s why most comic adaptations leave it ambiguous whether or not they’re canon or explicitly take place in an AU :P

@Red-Supernova
 
starlight glimmer could have been sunset shimmer…